And Now For Something Completely Different!

Having been in Africa since April, I knew it was time, past time in fact, for me to go on safari.  Due to my reluctance to ply the crap roads of Kenya, I had flown all the way down to Zanzibar, which meant I'd have to double back quite a distance to get to the Serengeti in Tanzania or Masai Mara in Kenya, which are contiguous with each other along each country's border.  Both of those parks get massive amounts of traffic and consequently have very high entry fees.  But they're close to population and tourist centers, and you are virtually guaranteed sightings of the Big 5 (the hunting trophies of lion, leopard, rhino, elephant, buffalo).  I was willing to forego that certainty in order to have a less populated trip.
Luckily, back in Lamu, Murray, an Australian, told me about his plans to see Ruaha National Park in southern Tanzania.  The second largest park in a large country packed full of big national parks, it's known for its large populations of elephants and lions and for being really, really out of the way.

Destination known, I needed to get organized.  Ruaha gets a few thousand visitors a year; I couldn't just roll up to the nearest city and expect to be plonked down in a Land Cruiser with five other passengers, as you can readily do in the other parks mentioned above.  I ended up finding a steal/splurge package with Coastal Travel, a company that flies bush planes all over Tanzania and owns safari lodges as well.  It was a splurge because I would be flying from Zanzibar straight into a national park, where I would be picked up and taken to the safari lodge.  Compared to a three hour ferry ride to Dar es Salaam, a 7 hour bus ride to Iringa, and then another 2 hours to the park, all in the usual level of discomfort I now associate with independent budget Africa travel, a bush flight wins every time.  On the other hand, the package was a steal because I wouldn't normally be able to afford staying in a park lodge period.  Lodges inside national parks are not dead cheap.

The flight from Zanzibar to Dar is a thirty minute ride over gorgeous shades of the blue Indian Ocean.  I sat directly behind the pilot of the Cessna Caravan and ogled the view from start to finish.  But I noticed the craftiness of the local woman who asked to sit in the jump seat, or what would be the co-pilot's seat if the flight had one of those.  Changing planes in Dar, I put on my biggest smile and nicest voice and asked if I could sit up front.  Thank you, Captain Maynard!  This is where my day started getting unbelievably good.  We took off, and I've never had such a fantastic view from a plane.  In these smaller planes, you don't fly incredibly high, so the view of what's on the ground is still good.  Our first stop was Selous Game Reserve.  We started to approach a flat strip of dirt, the landing strip, and I stared straight ahead.  Was that...?  No, it couldn't be... Oh my god, yes there were two giraffes on the "runway."  We buzzed them, turned, and reapproached while a car waiting at the strip drove the giraffes off the strip to clear the way for us.  The captain was bemused at how awesome I found this; it's pretty much a daily ocurrence for him.  For some reason, giraffes really dig the open space of the landing strips.  Our second attempt at landing was successful, and we dropped off some folks, picked up some others, and headed off into the great big blue for another 90 minutes to Ruaha.

Approaching Ruaha, there were no giraffes on the runway, but I could spot elephants, zebras, and some vultures as we touched down.  This is my kind of "airport."  Abundant wildlife, one open-air office, no x-ray machines, no tickets, no identification required, and the long drop toilet's down the hill, smack in the middle of a national park!  Ruaha is actually so big it has two landing strips.  Two other guests and I were picked up by our driver and guide, and we were off to see the game.  First objective?  To check out the pride of lions lounging in the shade about 40 minutes away.  Once we got "bored" of watching two adult females and 13 cubs yawn, nurse, wrestle, and unnervingly make serious eye contact with us, we went off to scope out a cheetah.  It was a big cat kind of day.  And at the end of it, we went back to the lodge, settled into our kerosene and candlelit tents with open air bathrooms with solar heated water, then had drinks around the fire and a big communal dinner.  Lodge living is really nice; I can recommend it to you.

Mdonya Lodge is basically set right next to a dry river bed, and the nature really comes to you, which is why you're not allowed to walk around unaccompanied after dark.  A couple of Masai guards are on hand to fetch you and take you back to your tent.  It was novel, but that was fine.  How many times in my life will there be a Masai warrior available to escort me anywhere?  I could see the flashlights reflecting in impala eyes on the short walk to my tent.  Lions prowled around the camp the first night while the hyenas yipped in the distance, and a buffalo was grazing between my tent and the neighbor another night.  I began to see the advantages of the nocturnal escort pretty quickly.

With the help of my skilled guides and drivers whose eyes are better suited to this work than mine, I saw so many animals doing so many things over the next few days:  Lions mating, a leopard stalking, elephants tearing down trees, giraffes lowering their necks to waterholes, a dead hippo bloated on its back in the river, not to mention small jackals, crocs, bat-eared foxes, rock hyraxes, which turn out to be elephants closest living relatives though you'd never know it, a python, kudu, dik diks, and loads more that I won't list for fear that you've already stopped reading this.

The morning of the second day, the manager of Mdonya, Alex, told me she'd received an email inviting me to join some overlanders on their way south.  Huh?  Ruaha NP is just about the last place you expect to be tracked down.  And then I remembered that a group of English people I'd first met in Ethiopia, then ran into again in Zanzibar, were staying with the founder of Coastal Travel, the company that owned the planes, tents, and vehicles I was enjoying so much.  They're a great group of Brits heading in the same direction, so I was more than happy to take them up on the offer of riding along for a bit.  I was due to fly back to Dar late the next morning, and I planned to meet them there.  As the Aussies say, too easy, right?  And so, on my third day of seeing beautiful wild animals in a stunning part of the world, I got dropped off back at the airstrip, fully intending to score the jumpseat again.

At the airstrip (no elephants this time), I ran into Malcolm, who also works for Coastal.  He seemed surprised to see me because he thought my friends were picking me up in Ruaha.  Huh?  By this time, I was really confused.  I had contact numbers for two of the six Brits, but neither I nor Malcom had mobile phone coverage in the park.  All the communication between the group and me had had at least two intermediaries, so I really didn't know what to do - get on the plane and surely miss them or wait with no transport or accomodation in the park.  Michole, yet another Coastal manager, to the rescue!  Her phone worked at the airstrip.  I couldn't reach Jenny or Pete on their phones, but Michole was able to reach Nicola, Coastal's founder, who assured us that the group had left Dar that morning, would be camping outside Ruaha park tonight, and that if I didn't meet up with them, I could fly back to Dar a day later, thereby assuring me that I would not be a refugee in a huge landscape teeming with lions.  I had already seen over 50 separate lions at this point, six of them with fresh blood streaking their faces, feasting on the remains of a zebra, so you can see my concern.

This was all pretty great because it meant I got more Ruaha and Mdonya time.  Of course, I inadervently made a whole lot of work for the staff.  The airplane people were concerned that I wasn't on the flight, Alex and Sarah back at camp worried that I'd missed the flight because of the driver, yadda yadda yadda.  But Coastal came through and treated me wonderfully.  I got the last guest tent (sorry, Malcolm, it would have been yours otherwise), I got to spend time at the camp during the day listening to the birds, and I got to watch a leopard start stalking impala at sundown.  Not bad for another day in paradise.  Fortunately, the lodge's Blackberry worked, so I was able to text the Group of Six, for lack of a better term, and work out a plan for the next day.  Too easy, right?

Actually, it was in the end.  Even though I didn't get the text saying they'd be a half hour late to the air strip the next day, so I was in a car with another Coastal employee getting a ride to the main gate, hoping that somehow we'd got our wires crossed and that was where the group would be.  Just as we were leaving the strip, they pulled up, I threw my bags in the back, and we headed off for more game viewing.  We almost picnicked where the lions ate the zebra, but it still smelled of carrion even though aside from some darkened spots on the ground, no trace of that zebra remained.  We had a little bit of patented Africa beaurocratic inefficiency (a facet of Africa I have yet to fully address in this space, but it's coming) getting out of the park, whereby I needed to part with another of my precious Andrew Jackson's ($20 bill), and then we bush camped in some kind of sand quarry just outside the park's unfenced boundaries.  I was offered the choice of a tent on the ground or a spot inside the Land Cruiser.  When I reflected on the local fauna, it was a quick decision.  And a good one too, because the lions did not sleep that night.  Tucked into a sleeping bag on a plank in the back of a converted Toyota suited me fine.